California-based network provider Intercage has gone completely offline following weeks of scathing criticism that it hosts an inordinate number of sites engaged in phishing, malware propagation, and other illegal activities.
Pacific Internet Exchange, which only began providing upstream service to Intercage in the last week or …

COMMENTS

Free Speech advocates should be the first to cheer

Quite frankly, spammers and malware pushers do more to damage the notion of "free speech" than any number of white-hat black-listers. These advocates ought to be on the front lines of the anti-spam fight, showing that government oversight and regulation aren't necessary because the community is capable of policing itself. If we continually show that we can't be trusted with nice things, then nice things will no longer be allowed to us...

Kaspersky

Spamhaus itself is a criminal organization

And should be prosecuted for its own capricious and malicious behavior. They often blacklist entire blocks of IP addresses belonging to ISP customers simply because some 12-year-old in the neighborhood tried running a TOR server for a couple of weeks, or some similar innocuous thing.

Re: Spamhaus itself is a criminal organization

Yea, that's a good one. You wouldn't happen to be affiliated with e360 Insight or similar mass-marketing organization would you? Subscription to Spamhaus' block list is strictly VOLUNTARY. They do a very useful service reducing the effectiveness of bulk email senders by preventing garbage from reaching their subscribers' inboxes. I realize that those who send bulk email are under the impression that I want numerous scams/shams in my mailbox daily but no, you are wrong. You are as welcome as the vermin that come to raid my outside garbage cans. Kudos to Spamhaus!!!

Re: Spamhaus

lolwhat?

Holy crap, I can't believe the load of trite you uttered there.

Spamhaus does not block IP ranges. Hell, if they did, the webhosting company where I work would have a lot more blacklisted IPs (as we get customers forwarding spam, not maliciously). Hell, if you want a "criminal organization", go look for SORBS. They blacklist massive ranges and extort (yes, extort) the holders to pay to have them unblocked.

Methinks that you're just burned because you were slammed by Spamhaus for bad practices or because you weren't smart/savvy enough to secure your own network/boxes...

win

"Free speech advocates aren't quite so sanguine. They worry the current informal and unregulated take-down process could eventually be co-opted by copyright owners or even repressive governments to shut down websites they don't like."

One is all for free speech, but one has no qualms in applauding this result. That criminal rings would attempt hide behind talk of free speech reminds one of the Bob Dylan line that "patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings." Behind the speech aspect (text served up for human consumption) in this case, there is machinery besides, and the intent of that machinery is quite clearly to steal from and defraud unsuspecting netizens. Hiding behind the "free speech" argument here is akin to defending a suicide bomber by saying that their act constitutes a "statement". That does not wash.

One would hope the same chaps who co-operated to bring the required pressure to bear in this case would not be quite so keen to collaborate with requests from "repressive governments". Judging by the types of people who made this happen, most of them would probably flatly refuse to help or simply give the "repressive government" agent the run-around. One hopes, at any rate.

This reminds one of another, similarly vexing social issue: when shall we finally ban organ-grinders from the streets of our fair cities? That is what one really wants to know!

Not a free speech issue

See, this isn't a free speech issue, it's a network abuse issue. Sending spam is network abuse. Spreading malware is network abuse. Running a botnet command-and-control is network abuse. I think this alone is the shortest defense against spammers that want to pretend shutting them down is some free speech issue.

Personally, I don't run any spamhaus, etc. I've got a Bayesian filter running (spamprobe). My computer burns a few more cycles sorting the mail (than it would if I just used an IP blocklist), but it's never blocked a legit message, and blocks almost all spam (it'll block like 700 and let 5 or so through).

Spamhaus

If it is legal then I can think of a way spammers can fight back.

Sure we all hate spam, but the problem with the anti spam organizations is they can turn on a dime.

If a group of spammers got together and created a few of these organizations then when exposed fingers would point everywhere, not only that they would be gandering a load of early warning if their spam was detected or not, they would also have info on the folk doing the detecting.

Now, how can anyone be sure Spamhaus is not already one of those organizations.

@ nice things, and patriotism

Nice things comment - what are you are 3 and 1/2 :) It is your life, the only people who can take things from you are other people their beliefs and their actions.

Freedom of speech has nothing to do with patriotism, it is a sentient right. Patriotism is the argument that a nation's greater good outweighs a persons personal philosophy, the reason it is the last refuge of the scoundrel is they appeal to it in others to further their own ends.

Solving spam is simple, it revolves around the use of public key encryption, if more people read up and started to secure we would not have email spam. spamhaus if they really wanted to help would advocate this approach not their current one. Their current approach gives them power, better to empower individuals then give more power to any group.

Spam only works because people let it work, admins would be better off letting the spam through for a while, getting people worked up about it outside of IT circles, and then showing them how to authenticate and sign email messages. That way the individual can start to block on signed messages or not, it also makes people far more responsible for their own environments.

And it doesn't affect free speech, what it does is allow people to wear ear defenders if they choose not to hear the free speech.

Way beyond spam

The net-abuse routing out of Atrivo was not just spam (both mail and web form spam), it was all sorts of malware, exploits, illegal porn, botnets and banking fraud.

This is not a free speech issue - this is simple crime.

Atrivo are not themselves the black-hats; the blame lies with a few of their resellers - primarily Esthost - which take up a majority of their netspace. I'm sure Atrivo will be back, but hopefully they will get the message that continuing to stick up for the criminals at Esthost is no longer acceptable.

Meanwhile Esthost are already moving resources to other netblocks they have which are routed by other shady upstreams. So on the one hand it's good to finally have something done about the biggest source of malware on the web after years of abuse, but on the other those of us blackholing them on a local level will probably get some new IP ranges to block...

I don't always agree with the aggressiveness of spamhaus's decisions, but in the grand scheme of things they have done a lot of good.